About Open Data Aha!

There’s increasing evidence – from right across the world – that open data can help:

Mapping open data-related stories from across the world

save lives

reduce costs

reduce crime

create wealth

educate people

improve health

increase efficiency

prevent corruption

support democracy

predict extreme events

inform decision-making

inspire new business models

create ‘smart’ or ‘smarter’ cities and communities

establish and maintain national /local infrastructure

do other neat stuff that we haven’t even imagined, yet…

Open Data stories – Tapping the source

The mouth of the Amazon River

Some organisations – like the Open Data Institute (ODI) and Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) – produce a constant flow of articles involving open data.

Others – like regional newspapers, charities, and individual bloggers – might mention ‘open data’ very rarely, and may not even use those words.

Some stories can be buried within academic research papers, written using language that only a few highly qualified people can understand.

With the ever-increasing flow of information, stories involving open data can be easily missed, or become difficult to find.

Open Data – Aha! aims to tap open data-related stories at-source, add them to a larger pool, and begin to look for patterns, gaps, trends and techniques which might be re-usable elsewhere.

In time, this site will include regular commentary and analysis, looking across the spectrum of open data stories.

We also intend to publish the list of stories about open data as open data.

Hunting and gathering

Open data – Aha!

However, it’s still early days and, right now the focus is on finding ‘stories’ and their sources, and making them available through the Open Data – Aha! web site, including on a map.

All stories are tagged, albeit quite arbitrarily at the moment – tags and categories will be rationalised once there’s enough of them to make it a worthwhile exercise.

All content shared through this site includes an acknowledgement at the beginning of each post, linking back to the original publisher’s web site. Tags are also created for the original publisher and author (where they can be identified).